M-Pesa
“Can Africa's dominant mobile money network become a developer-accessible financial infrastructure platform for the continent?”
Founded2007
HQNairobi, Kenya
IndustryFintech / Mobile Money
The story
Launched in 2007 by Safaricom as a peer-to-peer mobile money transfer service, M-PESA evolved into Africa's dominant mobile money platform powering payments, savings, credit, and merchant acceptance across Kenya. The platform expanded into business credit (Fuliza, Taasi Till via Asante), BNPL (Faraja via EDOMx), and international payments (PayPal, Visa virtual card, Wise corridor). The 2025 launch of Daraja 3.0 signals a push toward 'Fintech 2.0' — opening M-PESA as a developer-accessible financial infrastructure layer rather than a closed mobile money product.
Product timeline
2007
M-PESA launched by Safaricom as mobile money transfer service in Kenya· banking
2012
Onboarded Neural Technologies for Fraud Management System· compliance
2023
Launched Faraja BNPL service for Lipa Na M-PESA businesses in partnership with EDOMx· lending
2024
Launched Taasi Till Loan in partnership with Asante (fintech)· lending
2024
Awarded ISO 27701 PIMS certification· compliance
2025
Revamped business credit with Fuliza Biashara and Taasi Till· lending
2025
Launched Daraja 3.0 API platform· pivot
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by M-Pesa
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
4 layers disclosed in M-Pesa’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
M-PESA (self-operated)Lipa na M-PESA (self-operated)Pochi la Biashara (self-operated)M-PESA PayBill (self-operated)Buy Goods (self-operated)PayPal (M-PESA PayPal Service partnership)
Banking / BaaS
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
FX & payouts
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
10 more providers across 3 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.